Chris Bowen on Trump, science and coal: ‘We’re living climate change. What we’re trying to do is avoid the worst of it’

The climate change minister is ‘disturbed’ by rising temperatures and increasingly unnatural natural disasters – but that’s what gets him out of bed every day

In Spain, more than 200 people have been killed after the deadliest floods in the country’s modern history. Australia is heating faster than the global average, meaning more extreme heat events, longer fire seasons, increasingly intense heavy rain and sea level rise. And globally, this year is highly likely to be the hottest on record, beating the current title holder, 2023. For some, this escalating scientific evidence can be alarming. But the person in charge of Australia’s response to the climate crisis says that is not a word he would choose.

“If alarm implies concern, sure. But alarm implying surprise? No,” says Chris Bowen, the country’s climate change and energy minister.

“We’re living climate change. What we’re now trying to do is avoid the worst of it,” Bowen says.

“Report after report, temperature records tumbling, natural disasters increasingly unnatural – that’s why we keep going. That’s what drives me. It gets me out of bed every day. So perhaps alarmed is the wrong word. Disturbed, maybe. But, you know, not surprised.”

Bowen is speaking to Guardian Australia shortly before a US presidential election where polls indicate a 50-50 chance voters will elect a candidate who calls climate change a “hoax” and who would lead an administration intent on gutting clean energy and science programs and again pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Six days after the US election, thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries will land in the Russia-aligned petrostate of Azerbaijan for Cop29, an annual UN climate summit. Bowen will be at the centre of that meeting, having been invited to help lead negotiations on what is considered its most important work – setting a new finance goal to help the developing world.

The Australian government is also likely to learn if it will co-host the Cop31 summit with Pacific countries in 2026, an event that would bring tens of thousands of people to the country and increase scrutiny on its role as the world’s third biggest fossil fuel exporter.

But for now, all eyes are on the US.

What will a Trump win mean?

Speaking in his ministerial office in the Sydney CBD, Bowen acknowledges the election result will be seismic, and will shape the fortnight-long talks starting in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on 11 November.

Asked for his view on what a Donald Trump victory would mean, he is cautious but clear: the Albanese government and the Biden administration have been “closely aligned in policy and personal terms” and “obviously, having a United States administration with a very forward leaning climate policy is a good thing”.

He also gives three reasons why he believes a second Trump administration would be unlikely to live up to the former president’s anti-climate rhetoric on the climate crisis.

“Firstly, they are the United States. So the state functions are very important. And perhaps unlike 2016, where the result came as a surprise, if it is a Trump administration people are doing more preparation for it,” he says.

“Secondly, it’s hard to legislate in the United States, but it’s also hard to un-legislate. So the Inflation Reduction Act [which includes an extraordinary US$370bn in clean energy support] is the law of the land and will remain the law of the land unless it gets repealed, which will be very difficult to do. And thirdly, the private sector can help. In the United States, regardless of federal mandates, they know [climate action] is good business.

“Will the dynamics of Cop be different depending on who’s president? Of course they will. But does the rest of the world just walk away if the United States president is Donald Trump? No.”

Within climate activist circles, there is an expectation that if Kamala Harris wins, she may quickly set a 2035 emissions reduction target and other countries may follow. If Trump wins, many countries, including Australia, are likely to delay and recalibrate before setting their 2035 commitments, which are due next year.

Bowen says Labor will set a target based on “what we think we can achieve and what our contribution should be under the science” – and what others are doing. Initial advice from the Climate Change Authority found a target of up to a 75% cut below 2005 levels would be “ambitious, but could be achievable”.

According to a recent UN Environment Programme analysis, current national commitments would lead to only a 2.6% emissions reduction below 2019 levels by 2030. It is far short of what countries have agreed is necessary: a 43% reduction over that timeframe and a 60% cut by 2035.

Bowen says he understands “to a degree” why this big discrepancy makes people cynical, but argues the summits are important, not least because they send a signal to governments and investors marshalling trillions of dollars. He says there was genuine progress last year, including a non-binding agreement the world should transition away from fossil fuels and triple renewable energy by 2030.

“What’s the alternative? Not bother, not talk to other countries, not have targets?” he says. “Is it perfect? No, but it’s what we’ve got. I’d be surprised if people who are concerned about climate activism argue we should not be active participants in the global conversation.”

Bowen will arrive in Baku, an historic oil town on the shores of the Caspian Sea, wearing three hats. The most important role is co-charing with the Egyptian environment minister, Yasmine Fouad, negotiations to create a new finance goal – known in UN lingo as a “new collective quantified goal”, or NCQG – to help developing countries fight and limit climate catastrophe.

It is meant to replace a US$100bn a year goal that was set more than a decade ago and that it is agreed is woefully insufficient. Bowen says their ability to wrangle a consensus on the issue – covering how much is needed, who pays and what sort of public, private and multilateral bank finance should be counted – will largely determine if the summit is seen as a success or failure.

“I probably should manage expectations, but … this is the finance Cop,” Bowen says. “So getting an NCQG right is the key element.”

He is also chair of the negotiating bloc known as the umbrella group, which includes the US, UK, Canada and Japan, and will be representing Australia as it seeks to finalise whether it will host Cop31. Australia is favoured to win, but Turkey is also in the running and the decision-making process is opaque.

The bid has been mostly warmly received by clean energy and climate advocates and business groups, but some critics say Australia should not be rewarded with summit hosting rights while it is still allowing large new coal and gas developments.

This is the conflict in the Australian government’s climate position. At home, it has a program to underwrite enough renewable energy to generate 82% of the country’s electricity by 2030 and has legislated policies to drive a shift to cleaner cars and that promises to start to deal with pollution at large industrial sites. It is also attempting to argue against a Coalition nuclear energy proposal that many experts say would in reality boost fossil fuel power over the next two decades.

But it also has no plan to limit coal and gas developments for export. In September the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, approved the expansion of three thermal coalmines that could lead to more than 1.5bn tonnes of CO₂ being pumped into the atmosphere.

Asked if the government’s mixed messages – action at home, but unlimited shipments of fossil fuels to burn overseas – undermines its credibility and risks making people disengage on climate, Bowen responds that the Greens’ argument for no new coal and gas is a “neat, politically effective slogan”, but that “life is nowhere near that simple”.

“The idea that we can just say we’re going to stop approving new coal, which means we stop exporting coal in due course, that is not the way you get this job done,” he says. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s a drug dealer’s defence’. Well, ok … But the reality is that other countries will continue to export coal, and we need to think about our place in the world.

“I agree with this entirely: the biggest impact [on climate] we can have is on our exports. Hence, the need to become a renewable energy superpower.”

He points to an ambitious $30bn-plus SunCable plan to export solar energy from the Northern Territory to Singapore via subsea cable. Bowen was in the city state last month for the announcement the project had received conditional approval.

“You’ve got to look holistically,” he says. “Yes, our exports are important, but replacing our current fossil fuel exports with renewable exports is the key to it. Not just focusing on the negative – that we should be stopping fossil fuel exports.

“We should be replacing fossil exports with renewable energy. And that is a big task, which is going to take a little while.”

Cover photo: The US election result will be ‘seismic’ for international cooperation on the climate crisis, says Chris Bowen. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian